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[ATTACH][/ATTACH]I have been reading the postings here for awhile. Recently my KM 7D departed this world, so I am now getting used to my A700. Here is a shot I took the other day. I think the birds like it so I'll keep it.44578

Focus; You missed it.
Exposure: Under
Colour balance; good job you said it was a ketchup bottle.
This is a pretty mundane subject so unless you get the basics right, a "keeper" it is not.

Anyway, to illustrate the point(s) I took a pic of our Ketchup Bottle at a similar distance and under similar lighting conditions. You can right click the image for XIF which is
ISO 800, 1/40th, f2. I did not do any sharpening.

Sorry to be brutal and If I missed the artistic point, I apologise in advance.

Thanks for the tips Peekayoh. I did not use and post processing on the picture I posted but your processed looks a lot nicer. I hopfuly will be picking up a copy of Photoshop Elements 7 shortly. I have been using Picasa but it is pretty limited.

Ldorey, you can't rely on the camera to get the exposure dead on everytime. Presumably you were in amongst the trees in a low key situation but there are a couple of things you can try.
Switch to "spot" metering.
Zoom in tight on the subject, use the AE LOCK button to freeze the exposure, reframe the shot before releasing the shutter.
"Bracket" the shot.

If that fails, it's resort to software time.
Elements is good, Photoshop is better. There are deals for students.
Shooting in RAW gives better control over rescuing a shot. Sony provide a program for this but Adobe Camera Raw, provided with Photoshop and/or Lightroom2 is better and also provides for conversion to DNG files.